The Credit Union 2.0 Blog

CU 2.0 Podcast: Series 10

It’s the Credit Union podcast! CU 2.0 is excited to bring you the tenth in a series of podcasts from Robert McGarvey. Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast, regular interviews with credit union leaders, thinkers, movers, shakers and more. Today’s topic is credit union digital presence.

This week, Robert sat down with Amy McGraw, Tropical Financial and spoke about the Student Loan Crisis.

Here’s a terrifying number: Total outstanding student loan debt is $1.5 trillion. The average student leaves college owing north of $28,000. Talk about dream crushing. Talking about downscaling.

Enter ChangEd. It’s an app that says it can help graduates pay off debts faster by harnessing their pocket change. Automatically. Pretty much painlessly. Tropical Financial, the Florida credit union, is in a pilot program to show the power of pocket change. That’s what Tropical Financial vice president Amy McGraw tells us about in this podcast. Student loans already are impacting the ability of many credit unions to make loans to debt-burdened would be borrowers. That can put home purchases on hold. Ditto cars. So finding a way out is critical. ChangEd just may be the path.

At Tropical Financial, the hope is that by helping student loan holders pay off their debts faster, and with little pain, the credit union will gain visibility with Millennials in particular.

But, mainly, it’s also just about walking the credit union talk which means helping members live better financial lives.